10 Ridiculously Ambitious WWE Ideas That Failed Horribly
8. WBF
"Look at that mass! Holy cow!"
Without being crude, the WBF more or less acted as an expensive w*nk sock for Vince McMahon, who reacted to the muscle-flexers as if he was very much in a private place, and not a glorified conference room.
The story behind the WBF distills the very essence of Vince McMahon, from gumption to folly to micromanagement. He insidiously entered the established domain of the International Bodybuilding and Fitness Federation (IFBB) under the pretence of hawking some magazines before tapping up the (most ripped, obviously) talent. The very idea of another bodybuilding fed was ambitious in itself; the pseudo-sport is an esoteric pursuit, even by Vince standards. And of course, McMahon being McMahon, he just couldn't do bodybuilding as bodybuilding - he had to give these juiced-up monsters gimmicks, like the "Giant Slayer".
What's also brilliant is that the fates conspired to ruin this for McMahon, clearly feeling he'd played God: Lou Ferrigno was promoted as the WBF's top star, but never officially secured. Meanwhile, the WBF in itself acted as an indictment of his practises in the face of the looming steroid scandal, hastening its already inevitable demise.
The legacy of the WBF is one of pure embarrassment - but it, at the very least, provided us with the most OTT NOO YAWK dialect ever uttered (2:07).